Is Your Business Just an ATM Machine for Ministries?

— by Greg Leith

 “[W]hatever you do, eating or drinking or anything else, everything should be done to bring glory to God.”

1 Cor. 10:31 (Phillips New Testament in Modern English) 

It’s soon to be upon us... Christmas! Christ is born. Christians will celebrate the birth of Jesus. It will be a “most wonderful time of the year” as the song goes. But wait a minute. If we ONLY focus on the birth or death of Jesus, we may forget that he lived about 33 years doing the everyday things of life just like you and me. He ran a company making things, he led a team, some of whom gave him grief and challenged or betrayed him. He was frustrated with his team at times and got cross ways with government leaders. He prepared talks given to small and large groups, he got mad and cried. He got tired, was under extreme stress, and his good accomplishments were misunderstood. He was finally killed at a young age.  

The apostle Paul writes about Jesus in the book of Philippians in chapter 2: 

"When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process.” (The Message) 

In her magnificent little book, A Theology of the Ordinary, Julie Canlis writes:  

“Jesus is not just going through the motions of being human in order to fast forward to the cross. Jesus is being fully human in order that I might become, in him, fully human once again. Jesus took on my humanity in order that I might, like Adam, live in communion with God in my ordinary life. When Adam was created, being human was part of his daily worship. As we are made human once again in Christ, this too is part of our worship, and to be frank, much of this is very ordinary.” 

It’s clear that Jesus participated in the ordinary things of life. That means when you create a spreadsheet, hire or fire a team member, write an article, give a talk, create a strategy, execute a plan, shred a document, sell a product or service to a customer, manage a process, fix a broken system, or praise an employee, you can do it to the glory of God.   

You are not just an ATM machine to write checks to missions organizations, and God does not ONLY smile upon you when you help homeless folks or sing in church. Besides, do you really think God would have created your 40 plus hours of work Monday to Friday to be an irrelevant exercise, so you could really worship him for one hour in church or one week on a missions trip? Unlikely.  

Work has been around since before earth was created. God worked to create earth. Adam and Eve worked in the Garden of Eden. In the Old Testament book of Leviticus, the priests worked to build a place of worship. Today, you are working in God’s temple. It’s called your work. What would it be like to see it as worship? Might it be time to reclaim Monday to Friday for the glory of God? Clearly, Jesus was born and died. But he also lived 33 years between his birth and death. It’s time to not just put Christ back in Christmas but time to put him back into your everyday ordinary business life and place your work before God as an offering (Romans 12:1). 

This article was originally published here by Greg Leith

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[ Photo by Eduardo Soares on Unsplash ]